The harassment and vitriol spewed at women in the world of videogames (see critic Anita Sarkeesian and developers Zoe Quinn and Brianne Wu) only highlights the increasing isolation and insecurity of a certain subset of gamers at a time when women make up almost half of people who play games.

Gamergate isn't really about ethics in games journalism or explicitly about games at all. It's about a meaningful shift in cultural aesthetics in what the Boston Globe called gaming's "tumultuous adolescence as an art form." Of course, this isn't the first time people have overreacted to changing aesthetics—but it does help illustrate how aesthetics can be problematic.